The Brazilian DJ and producer talks about her relationship with cinema and the soundtracks that have shaped her sonic imagination.

Born in Rio, raised in Miami, and now residing in Milan, Emmanuelle is a mysterious international producer and DJ. Her music explores dreamy and sensual soundscapes, influenced by Italo disco and cinematic atmospheres. Her EP Disco Incantato (2021) is a manifesto of this attitude, and so is “Italove,” the instant classic track that in 2016 made her a key figure in the new Italo-influenced scene.

Throughout her decade-long career, Emmanuelle has shared stages with the likes of Soulwax and Roisin Murphy, performed at the Venice International Film Festival, and even provided soundtracks for runway shows for fashion houses such as Versace, Fendi, and Jacquemus. Her music has also been featured in multiple films, including the critically acclaimed Dogman (2018) by Matteo Garrone, showcased at the Cannes Film Festival.

For CAM Sugar, Emmanuelle has remixed “Taxi Girl (Ritmico Disco)” by Pulsar Music Ltd., a track originally featured in the 1977 film of the same name, starring Edwige Fenech, and included in Eli Roth’s Red Light Disco. Her remix extends the original track, transforming it into an erotic jam where the funk percussion blends with Emmanuelle’s voice, evoking memories of the languid and dreamy vocals with which Lizzie Mercier Descloux accompanied the nervous rhythm of her no wave songs. We interviewed her to delve deeper into her relationship with the seventh art and the sounds that have defined her creative vision.

CAM Sugar Journal: Your stage name immediately brings to one’s mind the erotic novel by Emmanuelle Arsan, which between the 1960s and 1970s became a literary case, as well as the film series that followed, including the unofficial Black Emmanuelle spin off series. Was it your intention to nod to that universe? 

Emmanuelle: Actually, Emmanuelle is my name. When I was little, my mom said that it came from a movie. It wasn’t until I was 13 that I realized that it was a porn film – a soft porn film. And she said Emmanuelle was very beautiful, I guess. Then, one night I was watching HBO and it came on, and I watched it because it had my name on it. Actually, it was quite empowering. I think that for the times it was sort of a bit too bisexual, it had women finding their sexual power and bisexual experiences, breaking taboos about sexuality. Obviously Sylvia Kristel is gorgeous. In the end, I wasn’t too mad at it. I thought it was kind of cool and a bit forward of my mother to name me Emmanuelle. 

CSJ: You were born in Rio, grew up in Miami, and then moved to Milan. How did your personal life and multicultural background come to shape your artistic identity?

E: Well, I think obviously growing up in Brazil, you’re surrounded by music. Everything is music. People are constantly Listening to music, making music with very little. Of course, bossa nova is one of the pillars of jazz music, and then you have what they call MPB, which is musica popular brasileira. Brazilian music greatly influenced me, even just by making me want to play instruments. 

CSJ: How did the musical heritages of the countries you lived in shaped your research on sound? 

E: When I grew up in Miami I listened to a lot of electro, Miami bass and electro. At the same I understood how much Funk Brasileiro is inspired by this Miami-based movement, which they sampled a lot. So, when I moved to Miami, I realized how much of the music that I was listening to on the radio in Brazil came from something else. So, that definitely has shaped me as far as electronic music goes. 

CSJ: And then you moved to Italy, which makes me think of the exchanges that the country had with Brazilian musicians in exile in the 1960s. 

E: During the 1960s, when most musicians were exiled from Brazil because of the dictatorship, some of them came to Italy, like Toquinho and Vinicius de Moraes. They had a stint here, they worked with and wrote a lot of music for Italian musicians. That encompasses all of the bossa nova stuff that you grow up listening to. And of course when I moved to Italy, I started discovering, you know, Ornella Vanoni and a lot of other musicians from the ‘60s and ‘70s. That definitely influenced me. 

CSJ: Your music also has a strong bond with the Italo wave that followed, though…

E: Yes, the electronic sounds of the ‘70s and ‘80s is what I was really interested in. To me they feel international in a way that I don’t think Italian musicians have seen after that period. Some of them were even singing in English and you could hear the accent, which is to me, really charming. I kind of wanted to replicate that in a way, except, you know obviously you can’t copy the greats. 

CSJ: Talking about cinema, what is your relationship with it?

E: I watch a lot of movies, I love cinema. Actually, I am quite obsessed with it. I spend a lot of time on planes and trains, and when I’m traveling, I try to download and watch things as much as possible. I am a really big fan of Antonioni. For me, he puts women in a central role, in a sensual way and talks about the complexities of being a woman, especially during that time. I like the vulnerability of the emotions portrayed. His women are all very complex. And I like that because I feel like we are complex. 

CSJ: From a musical perspective. Do you think that the soundtracks from that era of cinema can still play an active role decades after their composition? 

E: Definitely. I mean, music is music, right? There’s always going to be somebody who’s inspired by something that was made in a certain period in time. Personally, I love Giovanni Fusco, who made all of the Antonioni soundtracks. And I love Ennio Morricone. I think that there are a lot of people who are still inspired by the music in those films. And that’s what I love about Antonioni, the music is never in your face, it just complements the imagery: I think that’s great. That’s how you score a great movie, you know, it just adds to it and It doesn’t take the central character’s place.

CSJ: For Cam Sugar, you have remixed “Taxi Girl (Ritmico Disco)” by Pulsar Music Ltd., the project by Silvano Chimenti and Enrico Pieranunzi, two of Ennio Morricone’s longtime collaborators. How did you approach it? 

E: I think what caught my attention about this particular composition was the bassline and how current it felt. And I mean, despite the fact that it was short, you can basically get the idea for a song in less than a minute. It felt like something I could still hear. And you know, when I first heard it, I only heard the song, and I saw the title name, and it felt like something that could be in an erotic movie. And it just kind of got my imagination going. What’s the story behind it, and so on. I hadn’t watched the film at that point, so I liked not being constricted by the fact that I saw the film first and then created the song around that. I did it backwards. I think I created the story in my head first and made my own. I had my own imagination constructed.

CSJ: And what did you think of the film? 

E: After I remixed the track, I watched the film and it’s really silly. I mean, it’s erotic, but it’s not in your face. There was a little bit of boobies here and there, but, you know, I’m Brazilian, so I guess we’re just a little bit more less shocked by breasts. 

CSJ: There is a lot of debate around the representation of female characters in Italian genre cinema. Having watched Taxi Girl, what’s your take on the subject?

E: Edwige Fenech is gorgeous, I think she’s just a very sensual woman. Actually, in the film she is the one that is more capable than all of the men. She doesn’t care that every guy is going ‘gaga’ over her and, like, just creating chaos in order to be with her. She wants to be out there and be in the taxi, which is a very masculine sort of job. She is the master of her own destiny, she doesn’t mind getting herself into trouble and getting herself out of trouble, using her sexuality to get what she wants. I don’t see it as a problematic thing if you are empowered by your sexuality. Obviously, you know, there is a lot of intrinsic misogyny in certain things that the men say or they expect from this woman. But for the time, I believe that it was sort of forward thinking. I thought it was pretty empowering.

“Taxi Girl (Ritmico Disco) Emmanuelle Remix” is now out on all platforms.

Opening image: Emmanuelle is the DJ and producer who remixed Pulsar Music Ltd.’s “Taxi Girl (Ritmico Disco)”.